Friday, April 4, 2014

It is 1864, and the bloody conflict between
the Union and the Confederacy is raging.
Against the ominous backdrop of battle and cannon fire in the distance, we are
introduced to Will (Ashton Sanders), a 13 year-old orphan ostensibly wrapped up
in his own struggle to survive near the front lines.

Separated at birth from the mother he’s
never known, the vulnerable black boy is trying to save enough money to track
down his long-lost dad. He works as the assistant to Burrell (Bill Oberst, Jr.),
a bounty hunter in the fugitive slave business. Will does the white
Southerner’s bidding by first ingratiating himself with unsuspecting escapees,
and then betraying them once they confess to being runaways.

Today, we find him on a mission in
search of an ex-slave named Nate (Tishuan Scott). Will gains his confidence by offering
to escort him back below the Mason-Dixon Line
for a deathbed visit with a dying brother.

That establishes the absorbing premise
of The Retrieval, a riveting road saga with escalating tension. Will Nate catch on
before he’s turned over to Burrell? Or might the kid have second thoughts about
striking a bargain with the devil?

Written
and directed by Chris Eska, The Retrieval made a splash on the festival circuit
including at South by Southwest last year where Tishuan Scott won the Special jury Prize in the Breakthrough Performance category.
Besides being blessed with great acting, this atmospheric mood piece features
eerie cinematography that manages to transport you back to the Civil War era
more convincingly than either 12 Years a Slave or Django Unchained.

Slavery
revisited as a sick institution making for strange bedfellows.

Excellent
(4 stars)

Rated R
for violence and ethnic slurs.

Running time: 94 minutes

Distributor: Variance
Films

To see a trailer for The Retrieval, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8HmcHTtOKg

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KamWilliams.com

The Sly Fox Film Reviews publishes the content of film critic Kam Williams. Voted Most Outstanding Journalist of the Decade by the Disilgold Soul Literary Review in 2008, Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who writes for 100+ publications around the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee and Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.